Suggestion to counter bots in rating

Hi,

 

I'm not really interested in rating as such, just noticed that lately

there started some sport with bot-rating. I just couldn't believe some

human could have rate 2500+ photos in less than a week.

 

What about showing some gif/png with a phrase or at least a word and

letters rotated at random angles then nosify applied (or something

like that) - a technique used by many sites to at least slow down if

not eliminate at all bots from interacting with the site?

 

P.S.: I guess rating is just targeted because so many people are

sensible about it, but mentioned technique can and should be used to

protect forums as well.

<i>"I guess rating is just targeted because so many people are sensible about it"</i><p>Ilia, did you mean sensitive, very few people on photo.net are <i>"sensible"</i> about ratings ;-)

I hope mistakes in my not-native language will not make my post unreadable :-)

My understanding is that most of the bots are registered to Yahoo addresses -- since Yahoo already has a process in place that theoretically forces a human to respond to the 'word', I don't think that there's much to be done by photo.net.

 

Maybe we should force all new subscribers to critique and rate three photos -- one is an *obvious* 1/1, while another is an *obvious* 7/7... >:)

 

I think that the core problem is that the system is so old that a truly revolutionary approach (such as moderating by the community where you can vote responses up and down and only get new/more rights/rates as you get more up-votes from others) is pretty much impossible without throwing out most/all of photo.net's history.

 

I think poor Brian is pretty much stuck with all fingers and nine of ten toes in the dyke trying to stem the flood of crap -- for instance, I still fail to understand why someone would spend their time writing a bot to manipulate ratings on photo.net when it would be so much more fun to actually go out and take photographs.

 

jon

They're registering at yahoo only once manually. After that they start races with auto-pilot turned on.

I joined photo.net because I liked the diverse opinions on my work. The ratings challenged me to see through others eyes...which in My humble opinion is the foundation for growth in photography....it is the carrot to go for.....to see what kind of rating will I get and from whom.....Keeps it interesting, like meeting people for the first time at a convention or party.....seeing their work after they critique and rate mine....what a great thing photo.net has done here and to poo poo it is just wrong......to keep changing it because a few abuse it is what they want you to do.......the few abusers will over time go away....THEY ALWAYS DO CAUSE THEY GET BORED........it worked fine the old way......The critique statements, the names and the ratings all together in the little nested table is one of the top reasons for being a subscriber here.